iParty chief: It’s good to be king of party supplies

Sal Perisano of Cambridge is chairman and CEO of iParty, a Dedham-based party supply retail chain with 50 locations throughout New England and in Florida.

By A.J. Bauer

Sal Perisano can now safely call himself the king of party supplies - at least in New England. The 56-year-old Cambridge resident is chairman and CEO of iParty, a Dedham-based party supply retail chain with 50 locations throughout New England and in Florida. The company recently secured its dominance in the New England market by purchasing the remaining Party City franchises in Rhode Island. That deal followed the signing of a non-compete agreement with the rival chain last year that keeps it from opening any new stores in New England, with the exception of parts of Connecticut.

Perisano and his wife, Dorice Dionne, founded iParty in 1998 as a dot-com. The two had previously owned The Big Party, a party supply store chain founded by Dionne (now iParty’s senior vice president for merchandising), but sold it to try their hand in the online market. They quickly realized the customer base wasn’t there and repurchased The Big Party in 2000, renaming all of the stores iParty.

In addition to the five-year non-compete agreement with Party City, iParty has an agreement to buy about a quarter of its merchandise from Party City’s parent company Amscan Holdings, a deal that Perisano said further secures iParty’s dominance in the New England party scene.

With your recent purchases in Rhode Island, you’ve effectively cornered the party supply market in New England among specialty party shop chains. How did you go about cornering that market?

Last year, we started by doing a deal with our biggest competitor, Party City. We bought a large store from Party City in Peabody. We also effected a non-compete agreement with Party City where Party City and all their affiliates would not be able to compete with us in five New England states and in two counties in Connecticut, Windham and New London counties. Thereafter, there were two stores that were in Rhode Island that were both franchised for Party City. We made an offer to both franchise owners and we reached an agreement to buy the stores. We will acquire the stores on approximately Jan. 3 of 2008.

Who would you say are your biggest remaining competitors in New England?

There’s no one big competitor in New England, (but) lots of little independents that own a couple of stores here and there.

What’s your next step for expansion?

I think we’ll look to acquire some more independents that are in our markets. We also have five stores in Florida. Those stores are doing really well, so Florida could be another potential market for expansion for us. We started opening stores on the West Coast of Florida, in the Tampa Bay area. And they do very well, the demographics are very suitable for our business, there are lots of young families. It’s a tremendously growing area and we like it.

What would you say is the most prominent target demographic you’re going after?

Our core customer is a woman between 25 and 50 years old who has a couple of children, who is going to throw a party several times a year - whether they’re birthday parties or graduation parties or Halloween parties - and she is going to be doing some entertaining in her home. She’s our core customer. Over 90 percent of our everyday customers are women. Men come into our store for Halloween shopping and New Year’s shopping. Other than that, it’s a women’s business.

How do you manage to make your business year-round, as opposed to seasonal?

The core business is what we call a juvenile birthday business. And every day, some little kid is having a birthday party, so that’s not restricted to any one season. Secondly there is a season just about every month. Starting with Super Bowl, going to Valentine’s Day, going to St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, graduation, July 4th and then right into Halloween. So we have seasons throughout the year.

What are going to be the hot costumes for Halloween this year?

There are a couple of major Disney properties. ‘‘High School Musical’’ is the hottest property we have right now, followed by ‘‘Hannah Montana,’’ which is another Disney license. Those two Disney licenses are definitely the hottest. Then there’s ‘‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’’ All of these will have costumes, or have costumes associated with them which will be very, very hot.

A.J. Bauer of The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, Mass.) may be reached at ajbauer@ledger.com.

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